24 Nov 2009

This image is unfinished...but it has remained unfinished for two weeks now, so I think it's time to move on and post it as is. I originally intended for there to be text in this drawing.
This is the final image for this round of the Daily Drawing Project.

23 Nov 2009

Tradition!

Thanksgiving is tomorrow, and, like last year, I will be spending the day feasting on delicious food at my significant other's parents' house in Long Island.

This year I have a hankering to bring a little LaSota to the table. I won't be celebrating any part of the Thanksgiving weekend with my own blood relatives (a rarity, considering it's my mom's favorite holiday), so I'm going to bring a little of my own tradition to the dinner table tomorrow, gonna represent LaSota style.

And so...I just made my first Spinach Casserole (yes, it deserves to be capitalized). A staple at LaSota holiday dinners, the Spinach Casserole was, I believe, devised as a way to get kids to eat vegetables. The Spinach Casserole, you see, does not taste like vegetables. This is due to a careful (over-)cooking process whereby all nutritional value is squeezed out of several packages of frozen chopped spinach, which is then blended harmoniously with sour cream and dry onion soup mix, then topped off with plenty of butter and bread crumbs and parmesan cheese.

Yum.

Gourmet it ain't, but tradition it is. Yummy tradition.

22 Nov 2009

21 Nov 2009

20 Nov 2009

Scanning Delays...

No, really, I have been doing these drawings every day...it's just been an, um, crazy weekend, so I didn't get around to scanning everything daily for the last couple of days. Tonight is catchup time for the technological side of my Daily Drawing Project! And my scanning skills are still less than stellar...one of these days, soon, I hope, I will become one with my scanner...but that day is not today.

19 Nov 2009

Learning Curve

So I've been told that the quality of my scans is poor, and that the scans are not doing justice to the actual drawings...poorly representing them and all that. I have also noticed this myself...but, for now, my focus is on pumping out these drawings, and my hope is that my scanning skills will improve as I go. Hopefully I will have a bit of a chance this Sunday to put a little more time and love into the technological side of this Daily Drawing Project, and I'll jump up really high on that scanning learning curve! We can only hope...
It's nice to have a project.

18 Nov 2009

17 Nov 2009

16 Nov 2009

Daily Drawing Project

Well...now that I've figured out that using my scanner is oh-so-simple (I'm not doing any image manipulation, mind you, just straight up scanning and cropping...one step at a time, kids!), and now that I've dusted off my pens and gouache, I have spur-of-the-moment decided to embark upon an awesome I-have-no-idea-how-long-it'll-last project. It's my...

DAILY DRAWING PROJECT!

Yessir, I'm gonna make a new drawing every day (or night) and post it right here on this blog...until I grow bored or run out of things I wanna draw or my scanner breaks! (Knock on wood, none of that will happen any time soon...)

Let's see how this crazy scheme pans out...

Oldie but Goodie

Well, now that I've figured out how to use the scanner function on my Epson NX400 (so easy! I had just never tried before), there is no stopping me, kids. I'm going scan-crazy. Now if only I had Photoshop on my laptop...
This image is a gouache drawing I did in early 2006, from a series based on words I grabbed out of Margaret Atwood's The Tent.

Going crazy, time to sketch...

I think it's just been too long since I've put pen or pencil to sketch paper or bristol board or rag paper or...anything! So, until I de-crazify, I think some sketching is in order. No agenda intended. Here's the first two minutes of my efforts (the 80s music station is playing in the background in the other room).

Hoarse and sore...

...is what I am from cheering on the New York City Marathon runners outside my apartment this morning.

It was a great way to start the day, standing on the sidelines, cheering on all of the athletes who have worked so hard to run this marathon.
My favorite parts:
-Shouting out encouragement to individual runners by name (many had written their names on their shirts for this purpose).
-Sticking out my left palm to receive high fives from runners as they passed.

Pretty awesome, feel good stuff.

beige, surprisingly

I must be settling down, because a few weeks ago it was time to paint the walls of the new apartment, and I painted some of them beige, and I liked it.

Beige.

television...aggh!

I love television, sometimes.
Sometimes all I really need is a mindless hour in front of the tube (yes, I still have a tube - no LCD flat screens here).
But recently I've noticed how much more quickly time moves when I am watching television than when I am not.

I went for a walk in the park the other day. I walked several blocks to the edge of the park, walked deep into the park, and sat down on a bench to write for a bit. After writing for a short while, I took a look at the clock on my cell phone and noticed that only a half hour had passed since I'd left my apartment.
I was pleased to discover that, in the time it takes to watch a sitcom, I had gotten some exercise, enjoyed some nature, and written some words.
When I'm watching television, on the other hand, a whole hour can fall away in a moment with nothing at all to show for the time lost.

I think I might try watching television less and extending my life more.

mm, food

I've been having a wonderful day off from work - just a day off for writing and drawing and relaxing...a little birthday present to myself.

So it was getting on 6 o'clock, and I'd done a little of this and a little of that. I'd had a pretty low key, awesome day.
But I felt like crap.

How could this be? This could be because, ridiculously, I had forgotten to eat any food beyond my breakfast tea and egg.

I had no other food in the house and no cash in my wallet, so I stumbled to the nearest takeout place that would accept credit cards and, armed with my debit card, purchased some soup and stir fried asparagus, etc...
And as soon as I ate, I felt ten times better, sorta like a human again.

The moral of this story? Don't forget to eat, kids.

Parsons rally

Today I took an hour off from work to participate in a rally at the New School University. (I took many photos of the rally on my cell phone, but I still have not acquired the necessary cable to connect my phone to my computer...so, no photos for the blog yet, unfortunately.)

I earned my MFA in Visual Arts at Parsons, a division of the New School, five years ago. This year has seen much upheaval at Parsons. The new chairperson, Coco Fusco, is extremely unpopular with the faculty, who feel greatly disrespected and often ignored by Ms. Fusco. Unrest in the department reached a climax just before Spring Break, when 12 faculty members, some who had been teaching at Parsons as many as 34 years, received notification via email that they would not be teaching their classes in the coming semester. The fact that this email was sent from Ms. Fusco did not help the situation.

I don't mean to put all the blame on Coco Fusco here. For all I know she is just a mouthpiece for the administration. The bigger targets seem to be New School President Bob Kerrey and the Parsons Dean and Provost, who seem to be on a mission to completely change the nature of the Fine Arts department by morphing it into a design and business oriented program. Parsons faculty, students, and alumni fear that, ultimately, an object-making curriculum, and the physical graduate studio spaces that go with it, will be done away with.

Part-time faculty Peter Drake (with whom I had a year-long course in my second year at Parsons) and Laurence Hegarty have spearheaded a lot of the faculty resistance effort. Their actions have been covered by several news sources, including the New York Times:

Parsons Faculty is Cut Amid Protests by Artists

The Parsons faculty has been having trouble with the New School administration ever since they first organized and secured a hard-won union for adjunct faculty (the lifeblood of most New School departments). See this 2004 Village Voice article as reference:

New School's Labor War

The hurdles these faculty have had to deal with seem extremely ridiculous when one considers that the New School was founded in the middle of the last century quite specifically as a liberal, progressive institution.

So, I've written emails to the New School administration as a concerned Parsons alumna, and I went to the rally outside the main administration building today.

The rally was energized, and also peaceful. Police put up barricades to control the flow of pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk around the rally, but there were zero altercations. Faculty and students just wanted their voices to be heard. I was so glad to be there, surrounded by my former classmates and teachers, among many others (the organizers estimated the turnout to be around 300+). Even in these troubling times at the New School, I found myself proud to be an alumna, because being a graduate of the Fine Arts program meant I was affiliated with that entire creative community - and today I was reminded how powerful it can feel to be a member of a community. I felt revved up, and inspired to create more.

I want to thank the organizers of the rally today for a wonderful event - I hope that today's rally, and continued action, leads to greater transparency in the New School administration and greater communication with the Parsons faculty.

I'm trying to understand...

...these reactions of teenagers to abusive relationships:

Teenage Girls Stand by Their Man

A lot of these girls seem to be defending Chris Brown's beating of Rihanna with the reasoning that men and women are equal and therefore equally responsible for anything that happens within a relationship. It's difficult to argue with a group who thinks its position is based in equality, but something just doesn't sit right here.

One girl's parents instruct her to strike back if she is ever hit by a man. What happens to this advice as the kids age and grow, and the men gain significant physical advantages over the women? I agree that a woman should "fight back" in that she should not put up with abuse, but to suggest that a woman should try to match a man physically could lead to more danger for the woman.

Abuse is an extremely complicated issue. People abuse others, and abusers stay with their abusers, for so many reasons. Most human behavior can be explained somehow. We can come up with psychological profiles to give us reasons for this or that action. But at a certain point, even if things are explicable, isn't there cause to intervene when the behavior is destructive? Who cares if we know why the abuse is happening, if it is clear that the abuse is harming someone?

art school = waste of time?

I used to spend more time than I do now wondering whether my years as a graduate art student were a creative and financial waste of time. But once in a while I read something that gets those thoughts stirring in my head again.

I completed my MFA in Fine Arts in 2004, and I'm currently looking forward to paying off the loans I took out for this degree for the next 25 years or so. (Hm, hopefully not that long...c'mon lotto! Big money! No whammies!)

In the couple years after I graduated, as I slowly accepted the fact that loan repayment was to be my new constant companion, I doubted many times whether the financial investment was worth it. I rarely make (visual) art now, and I have no desire to teach art at a college level (this was the goal of many of my classmates, as the MFA is the terminal degree in the field and required for nearly any teaching position). I could not afford even to work in a (generally not monetarily awesome) field related to visual art, as it was crucial that I start making significant money immediately to pay back Uncle Sam.

Well, I'd had such thoughts clear from my head for some time, but they were just reactivated tonight by an article by Dave Hickey in the March 2009 issue of Art in America: "Revision Number Six: Addictions." (Note: I do not understand the meaning of this title - perhaps if I'd been reading Art in America regularly I'd know what the heck this title is all about?) (Also note: I've always enjoyed Dave Hickey's writing - I think he has an intelligent unique voice, and he doesn't apologize for going against the grain once in a while).

Anyhoo...in this article, Hickey argues that no school program can create an artist (you either are one or you're not) and that school can in fact damage artists.
These are arguments that I've heard, and contemplated, before. I believe there's some truth to these arguments.

On the other hand, I can also readily see some benefits of art school. The most glaring benefit, in my mind, is the opportunity to build a professional network. You could be an amazing artist, but if you don't know other artists or know people who can help get your work seen by others, what's the point?
Building a community of colleagues is also important, I think, as an emotional support system during the periods of self doubt that plague absolutely every artist I know.

It is because of the benefits of building a community of fellow artists that I am contemplating returning to school for an MFA in creative writing...but that's a topic for another post...

Cartooning is a beautiful art form.

Last Friday I went to a joint talk by Chris Ware and Marjane Satrapi, moderated by Françoise Mouly (New Yorker art director, wife of Art Spiegelman, etc). The talk was a free event of N.Y.U.'s Festival of New French Writing. I regret that I could not attend so many of the Festival's talks, but I am so glad I was able to catch this one at least.

I first started to become aware of Ware (har har) in 2002, when he was included in the 2002 Whitney Biennial for Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. I was blown away by the incredible detail, and at the same time simplicity, evident in his work. The sheer number of hours that must've gone into production of this book-length comic (graphic novel?)...it was the only kind of artwork that seemed to not only engage me but give me the urge to run home and work on something myself. I love art with that effect.

As much as I find myself more and more interested in comics as an art form, I was still not aware of Satrapi, until Friday night. This despite the fact that the movie version of her book Persepolis had been nominated for an Oscar. (Certain parts of my pop culture knowledge simply have big gaping holes - I've come to accept this).

Anyway...I just wanted to say thank you to NYU for bringing Satrapi to my attention through this joint lecture series. It was such a treat to watch both her and Ware talk about their work. They're both excellent artists who work in the same genre but in totally different styles, and it was amazing to see comics taken so seriously by two such different personalities. Satrapi was full of energy and endlessly quotable, and Ware was, like the characters in his comics, endlessly apologizing for existing. Totally fascinating.

Debris.

I manage a small boutique in Nolita. Every day, before I open the store, I sweep the sidewalk. Some days are messier than others, but generally the litter strewn about is not all that interesting.

Today there was a concert ticket stub in the pile of trash I was sweeping together. I was curious to see what concert this stub was from, so I leaned down close to read it. It was a concert for the band Squeeze.

Squeeze? When have they played a concert recently? I wondered. So I looked to see where the concert had taken place: The Academy.
And then I saw the date of the concert: 1995.

Man, some debris has quite the life span.

Interesting

Right now, MSNBC and CNN are covering the inaugural parade, and Fox News is broadcasting live from Bush's homecoming rally in Texas, where he is giving a speech. I hope Fox can learn to say goodbye.

This time tomorrow...

...Bush will not be our President.

:)

books on writing

I have been writing a LOT recently (really, I have - just not on this blog).
I am having a blast discovering my apparent passion for writing, and I am also reading more than ever, devouring books.

One thing I've noticed is that there are tons of books out there ABOUT writing: books about finding your voice, books about honing your craft, books about getting published. I started to think that absolutely everyone must want to be a writer, for there to be so many books out there on the subject of writing.

But then I thought: perhaps it makes sense that there are so many books on writing. After all, writers write, and one area that all writers have some level of knowledge about is...writing. So perhaps many authors feel inclined to pen a book on their craft.
There are plenty of books out there about pursuing art, music, etc...but books on writing outnumber them all.
Naturally - if you are a writer, you write...if you are an artist or musician, maybe you write, and maybe you don't, but the pool of authors for books in those fields must be considerably smaller than it is for writing.

This post officially wins the award for most frequent use of the word writing.

Lopate

I listen to WNYC, the New York City NPR affiliate, a lot.
I love the Brian Lehrer show (10am-12pm every weekday) the most, but I often listen to other programs as well.

Immediately after Brian Lehrer's show is the Leonard Lopate show (12pm-2pm every weekday). I have *tried* to listen to this show, hosted by the brother of writer Phillip Lopate, many a time and enjoy it as I do my Brian Lehrer. I have concluded that this just cannot be done.

Leonard has a way of speaking that grates on me just a bit. He asks questions in a manner that, I think, sounds mildly presumptuous. I believe this is because he extends his speaking out in such a way that he always seems to squeeze in his own view/opinion of a situation at the same time he is asking his guest for their view. It can be a very leading way to inquire about something.

But as much as I always have trouble with Leonard's interview style, I am sure I will continue to listen to his program. I just love WNYC too much, and sometimes he does have some very interesting guests on, guests that don't become in any way derailed by his questioning methods, as I do.

Perhaps I am alone in my view of Leonard. I try not to judge, really I do. Sigh.

Treadmill TV, Part 2

Okay.
My gym has decided to leave the televisions on MTV for some kind of extended time period, I guess (previous long-term gym television choices have included, inexplicably, TBS, C-Span, ESPN2, and various infomercial stations).

So this MTV marathon gave me the opportunity yesterday, while running along on the treadmill, to experience another MTV program previously unbeknownst to me...well, at least to experience it in part, and with closed captioning instead of sound. This latest program is called The City, and as far as I could tell, it is intended to be a Sex and the City for females in the 20-23 age bracket (oh, and probably in the aspirational high school age bracket as well...it's never too early to start dreaming about your big city move to NYC, girls).

Anyhoo...I was all set to share my rage at yet another drama that mischaracterizes the reality of life for 20-somethings in New York City...but then someone informed me that this show is in fact, at least in theory, a documentary of ACTUAL young women making their way in the city. Really??? Who the hell are these people? They work at entry level jobs at Diane von Furstenberg, yet they are able to afford beautiful, new, sunlit apartments in Tribeca and Gramercy. To use the lingo of the young kids: WTF??

Ugh. I think I might just watch the premiere of Real World: Brooklyn tonight so that I can further develop my MTV rage. Apparently the kiddos in this season are living in a loft in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Having recently lived in Red Hook myself for two years, I look forward to the ridiculous portrayal of these people in a very personal way.

Maybe this is bad for me. Maybe I need to de-program MTV on my television. I just find it so enraging and fascinating.